Did China use Indian Govt servers to hack into US network?

It is now suspected that China was behind hack of US commission, for which India was blamed initially. US officials now say that the National Foreign Trade Council may have been main target and Indian role less likely. The matter is akin to Chinese dumping sub standard and fake medicines in Africa with made in India label.

News of Indian Army hacking the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission surfaced earlier this month when an amateur “hacktivist” group claiming to operate in India published an alleged memo from an Indian Military Intelligence unit to which extracts from commission emails were attached.

Indian intelligence believes that the hacking was done by foreign country using the National Informatics Centre (NIC) servers.

The incident had set a chorus of denials from the Indian Government and US telephone companies that India had been granted backroom facilities by which it can access the users data.

NIC servers seem to be not hard to hack as NIC, Indian Army, Central Bureau of Investigation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs etc, maintained by NIC have been hacked before. In November 2011, the Indian Govt had raised doubt that its NIC servers were used to attack Chinese assets. The incident, if combined with the current incident can be viewed as Chinese attempts to show India in bad light. In this incident too, the Chinese claimed that their servers were hacked.

It is possible that China is trying to bring a bad name to Indian IT prowess, just like it tried to attempt to defame Indian Pharmaceuticals industry in Africa.

1. Introduction: Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) established in 1942 is India’s largest research and development organization, with 37 laboratories and 39 field stations or extension centers spread across the nation, with a collective staff of over 17,000. CSIR funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, operates as an autonomous body registered under the Registration […]